Urlaubstracker entered the travel blogging scene in 2013, with founder Jonas Schulze Dieckhoff at its helm. As an avid budget traveller himself, Dieckhoff wanted to bring affordable, action-packed travel to the masses. It’s safe to say he’s succeeded. Urlaubstracker (in English: ‘holiday tracker’) is now one of the largest travel blogs in Germany and Austria, boasting pre-pandemic audiences of up to 3.5 million site visitors a month.
With the goal of making travel cost-effective and accessible, Urlaubstracker’s deal team hunts down the best travel offers available. It then shares the information in blog format and distributes its best blogs via social media, allowing users to easily view dates, hotel details and all relevant trip information in one place.
Since Urlaubstracker’s humble beginnings, the blog has grown to cover travel tips, inspiration and news. It’s also mindful of the changing nature of its audience, shifting to accommodate emerging travel trends and expanding its social media outreach to encompass platforms like TikTok, Instagram and Facebook.
Affiliate marketing has also played a big role in Urlaubstracker’s success. With the help of affiliate partnerships, the company can turn a profit while staying authentic to its core values — after all, Urlaubstracker is a travel blog at heart and always has been.
Without its own booking engine or products, the site relies on affiliate partnerships to continue finding deals and producing valuable content. The company’s Senior Key Account Manager Anke Mesloh explained, “[having] a wide range of partners helps us to stay flexible and offer the best quality offers to our community.”
An emphasis on affiliate marketing has allowed Urlaubstracker to better adapt to COVID-19, an event that hit the travel industry particularly hard. “The biggest lesson from the pandemic has been that even the best plans can be completely turned upside down,” said Mesloh. “The most important thing is to stay flexible, innovative, and open-minded and not miss any of the emerging trends.”
Urlaubstracker has done just that, finding the silver lining in otherwise trying times. The site took advantage of travel disruptions to work on new verticals, developing its mobile application and improving overall user experience.
Urlaubstracker’s quick adaptation to pandemic-related trends has meant catering to a new kind of audience, one with an increased demand for exotic travel destinations, last-minute bookings and local travel. These trends go hand-in-hand with innovation and timing, two hallmarks of Urlaubstracker’s business philosophy.
The pivot has proved fruitful. Creative solutions like stay-at-home cooking guides allowed it to continue growing and working with affiliate platforms, while the rest of the travel industry remained at a standstill. And “now that travel is picking up again, we’re much stronger than we ever were before,” said Mesloh.
Looking ahead, the team hopes to expand its offerings to include virtual reality and eventually even hyperloop travel — the travel of the future. But it doesn’t plan to walk this road alone. Urlaubstracker values its advertiser relationships, which are built on a foundation of trust, honesty and good communication. “To ensure we can offer the best value we need to know what the partner provides and what its unique selling propositions are so we can create the best possible content.”
Together with its advertisers, Urlaubstracker is poised to take the German-speaking travel market by storm as the industry seeks to re-establish itself. With a focus on versatility and strategic timing, Urlaubstracker is staying true to its mission to make travel affordable and accessible to all, no matter what the future of travel holds.
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